The Art of Forgetting
by Scorpia710
Summary: Every year it was the same, Severus Snape cleared his face of all emotion, apparated to Privet Drive and visited a little boy whose only desire in the entire world was to have someone that would love him. Potions and Snitches Halloween fest 2014 entrant.


The agitated tapping noise of his fingers on the roughened wooden table was the only noise to be heard on this side of the dungeons.

Severus glared unseeingly into the corner of his library, where a surprisingly large fern held residence. It was a gift from Pomona, one he'd refused and yet it had still found its way into his living quarters and had thus far refused to die no matter what he did to it.

At the moment, it could have burst into large purple flames and he wouldn't have blinked. His thoughts were occupied with more important matters, deeper and darker matters.

He hated this day. From the time he awoke in the morning, already weary because he knew what day it was, to late that night when he fell back into the bed or an arm charm depending on how emotionally drained he was, Severus Snape violently hated everything about this day.

Well...almost everything.

The tapping abruptly stopped. His dark eyes went from the plant in the corner to the small cotton bag sitting upright on the table closest to the door. He'd placed it there so it wouldn't be forgotten, and now the cheery colors of the fabric seemed to mock his bleak mood.

Disgustedly he snarled and before the thought had thoroughly panned out in his mind, Severus had burst from his spot at the table, and snatched the cotton bag up and was striding toward the fire.

"_Lacarnum Inflamarae_!" Flames exploded out of the fireplace with the intensity of his casting before quickly calming down to a steady roar. Severus breathed in and out harshly and looked down at his hand. He was grasping the bag so tightly that he knew the contents were probably a little worse for wear, but not damaged to the point that they were useless...but if he threw the entire bag into the flames...

The large and sudden sound of the dinner gong startled him, and the moment was over.

Hesitantly, Severus dropped the harmless looking bag into the outside pocket of his cloak. He wouldn't have been able to destroy it anyway, no matter how desperately he wanted to, he knew it wasn't an option. Not now, and perhaps not ever.

With despair written across his face, and shoulders sunken in defeat, he headed up to the feast that awaited him, as it had for the past five years. He found his place at the Head Table and ignored, to the best of his abilities, the excited talking of the students and the ghastly decorations. They were about the same every year, the Great Hall was festooned with candy-filled pumpkins, black cauldrons of big lollipops, carrot cake, and orange streamers were haphazardly hung from one side of the hall to the next.

Knowing the task he'd be faced with later made the time seem to drag by. Dumbledore said a few words and Severus ignored every one of them and eyed the live bats flying overhead instead.

There had to be a sort of shield charm in place to keep them from bombarding the students. He wished to know which one it was, if just to remove it and watch them all run about.

"Severus? You look darkly amused, do I dare ask why?"

He glanced at McGonagall, and then busied himself with making a cup of tea when her eyes softened at the noticeably darker circles under his eyes. She didn't speak another word, and he somehow refrained from snapping at her when a large slice of Sheppard pie levitated itself onto his plate.

When the students seemed to be finished, and there was more conversation going on around the room than eating, Dumbledore stood up to announce the nights entertainment.

"Now that we have all finished the delicious meal so graciously prepared for us, and are contentedly plump, I'd like to introduce the Bewitching Bedlam Brothers!"

He clapped and sat back down as four large pumpkins seemed to lift up into the air by their own power.

The students were remarkably quiet-until the pumpkins were thrown into the air. Severus quietly stood as the room exploded into cheers when the ghostly brothers made themselves visible to the human eye just in time to catch the flying produce before they were smashed to pieces on the stone floor.

Though Severus could feel Dumbledore's eyes on his back, the man didn't try to stop him from leaving so he could watch the rest of the show. He never tested Severus' patience on this night.

He went the long way around the Great Hall, through the teacher's lounge, down the long corridor  
>and finally to the entrance way and out the front door. With the joyful laughter and excited talking behind him, Severus felt he could breathe a bit easier. The air held a slight chill, but he didn't even bother casting a warming charm on his robes. The cold would help him to remember that this was just a job he had to do, nothing more, there couldn't be anything more to it than that.<p>

Once he was beyond the front gate, and the lights from the Great Hall were distant, Severus cast a notice-me-not-charm that would help him avoid any Muggles. Anyone not watching closely would have missed the way his hands tightened into fists, and how he seemed to force himself to breathe in long and slow.

Then, before he could lose the courage, he apparated.

Privet Drive never seemed to change. Every year he returned, and every year the same people walked up and down the road with their children a tad bit taller than last year and always dressed in a different costume. Finely manicured lawns were decorated with carved pumpkins glowing from within, badly placed spider webs were laid across hedges, lawn gnomes and trees. Every once and a while as he walked, there would be plastic skeletons dangling from tree limbs or a skeleton's hand would seem to be bursting out from the ground, ready to grab at the ankle of a wayward trick-or-treater.

Though this much was always the same, Severus was never quite sure what to expect once he reached house number four.

Petunia was not to be outdone by her neighbors at any holiday, but she also refused to talk about anything magical in her home, so how could she decorate her house appropriately.

A few spider webs adorned the hedge that ran down one side of the house, and some large plastic spiders had been hung from the one small tree in their yard. Several jack-o-lanterns lined the sidewalk and Severus stopped walking to look up at the front door. A bowl of candy sat in front of the door, a semi-pleasant and colorful note inviting the children to 'Please feel fee to take two pieces, but NO more!'

Uncertain what to do next, Severus stared at the house as a group of friendly bantering school children walked right past him. One moved to avoid stepping on the end of the man's cloak, though he did not even seem aware that he had done it as they continued up the street, dressed as fictional heroes and villains.

"Where's your kid?"

Startled, Severus spun around drawing his wand as he did so.

A pair of remarkably familiar eyes gazed up at him, unafraid and curious. The child had walked right up to him, not deterred at all by the notice-me-not spell, and him, in training to be a spy. Obviously more training was going to be needed if this six year old could sneak up on him-and someone really needed to have a conversation with the child about strangers.

Lowering the wand, Severus found himself unable to think clearly. Those eyes in that face had left him dumfounded, and it wasn't the first time. He'd come here to find Harry, but that was about all he'd managed to plan out.

"My what?" he finally asked, eyebrows furrowing and voice not as firm as he would have liked.

Tilting his head, the boy regarded him in a puzzled manner. Harry crossed his arms over his chest, the sleeves of his rather large shirt completely covering his hands.

"Your _kid_," he said again, slightly slower. "The adults don't normally dress up here unless they have a kid to take trick-or-treating...if you don't have a kid, people will look at you weird."

Harry looked up at Severus, frowning severely as if he couldn't understand how someone _didn't_ know that.

Blinking, Severus stared down at his robes, which would have drawn a large amount of unwanted attention from the Muggles in the area...if he hadn't spelled himself unnoticeable from them.

"Ah, yes, I see what you mean." Severus was frowning now too, unsure what to do.

"I like it, it's cool and moves around when you walk...I just don't want people to be mean to you. They don't like it when people look different from them."

Harry had spoken quietly, suddenly shy under the intense scrutiny and it wasn't lessened any when Severus stared at him flabbergasted once again in the span of only a few minutes. It was his turn to say something but for the life of him, he couldn't think of a singular thing to say that would match that kind of concern and sincere goodness.

This was a predicament, because Severus found himself suddenly quite terrified of failing this little boy who had remarkable insight into how people worked, especially for someone so young.  
>Most likely because he'd been treated badly for being different, but Severus couldn't dwell on that thought long.<p>

"I...er," Severus searched desperately for the words, "perhaps if you pretend, just for a while, to be my..._kid, _maybe then I won't look so silly."

Those green eyes were wide when they shot up to look at him, and Severus knew he hadn't failed. Not in the least.

"_Really?_"

"Well, yes. You'd be doing me a great favor."

"Okay! We can sit over there, on the sidewalk, and if people ask what my Halloween costume is, I can say I'm the adult and you're the kid because you're dressed up and my clothes are really big!"

Severus opened his mouth, wondering how he'd suddenly become the child in this situation. But Harry was already making his way across the street looking happy for the first time since they'd started talking and Severus found that he didn't mind this new plan after all.

And that's how Severus Snape, despised Potion's master, found himself hesitantly sitting on the curb of a Muggle street on Halloween night, side by side with a very cheerful, not-at-all afraid, little black haired boy.

"You didn't want to go house to house like the other children?"

Severus found himself asking this exact question every year, and the reply he received was basically the same. He hated asking it, but he had to know the truth, he couldn't let himself be deceived into some false image of love and affection like the others. He knew what Petunia was like, she only grown steadily more bitter since childhood.

"Oh, I'm not allowed. Aunt Petunia said I only the good children get candy on Halloween..."

"...and you aren't good?"

Hands clasped in his lap, Harry looked up at Severus from underneath his fringe. A hesitant look on his face.

"I try to be good, but I'm just very bad at it, I guess."

The wording of that statement, along with Harry's impression of six year old resignation had Severus' lips twitching even though he tried not to show it.

"Last year I couldn't go because I got better grades than Dudley, and this year I made sure that my grades were bad-and I still can't go."

Amusement suddenly gone, Severus rubbed his head with one hand.

"Harry," Severus sighed, "She doesn't like it because she thinks Dudley should do better than you, but...as my imaginary son, I would be very-very pleased if I knew you were getting good grades in school. You shouldn't do badly just because that's what is expected of you, you should want to do the best you can, even if people get mad about it."

The poor boy looked so confused, and Severus had to look down the street and away from those searching eyes. There was a deep ache in the vicinity of his heart.

"Aunt Petunia...she told me that my parents died on this day, when I was a baby...and she said that it was my fault."

Eyes shutting tight, Severus kept his face turned away and tried to keep from snarling at the unfairness of it all. He hated this day.

"Is that why she doesn't like me?"

It was all he could do just to breathe normally.

"Your aunt...she is wrong for disliking you."

"It's...not my fault they died in the car crash?"

"_What_?"

"Huh?"

"They _did not_ die in a car crash, and it was not your fault, _Merlin!" _Severus stood up, wishing he could blast something, and then sat back down at the startled look on the young boy's face. He didn't want to scare him off, for several reasons.

"What happened, Harry, was not your fault at all. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. You-your mother loved you very much."

Harry was silent, looking at his raggedy trainers and holding so still that Severus wondered if he was still listening. Then, softly he asked, "And my dad?"

Severus swallowed, his voice was hoarse. "Yes?"

"Did he love me too?"

He couldn't look the boy in the eyes when he responded, but it wouldn't have mattered, Harry was still staring at his shoes.

"Your dad...he loves you too."

The group of four children all happily swinging bags of candy passed by, the few adults with them looking tired but pleased. It was getting late. None of them had looked over at odd pair sitting on the corner, talking of difficult things that few would understand.

"How do you know all this?"

Severus sighed and wished he could give the boy the answer he deserved, instead he changed the subject.

"Where's your aunt?"

"She took Dudley to Aunt's Marge's house, said her neighborhood gave out better stuff. They'll probably spend the night, since Dudley hasn't got school tomorrow."

"And your uncle?"

"He's watching the telly and blowing his nose, Dudley gave him his cold."

"Does he know you're out here alone?"

Harry tried not to look abashed, but didn't do very well. "Er...I'm not alone, you're here!"

Sly little thing, wasn't he? Severus thought, eyebrow raised.

Almost all the neighborhood children had found their way back home, porch lights were turned off, leftover candy (if there was any) was brought inside, and yet, Harry and Severus stayed right where they were.

"Is that _really _a costume?"

Exasperated, Severus looked to see that Harry was looking dubiously at his cloak.

"And what if I said it wasn't?"

Biting his lip, Harry glanced at him, and then leaned in close to whisper near his ear. Severus couldn't remember the last time someone had confided in him.

"Sometimes...I can make things happen, and I don't mean to do-it just happens, like when I said that I don't mean to be bad."

Severus was tired of hearing how this child was told he was bad. Even now, Harry looked unsure, as if he was afraid that what he said would be used against him.

"What sort of things happen, Harry?"

"Um, I've made locked doors open, and one time Dudley ripped my homework and I fixed it without tape! Like it had never been ripped...but then Dudley saw and told aunt Petunia that I'd stolen his homework and turned it in as mine. But he was lying," Harry assured Severus. "In a book I read, the people that could make things happen like me, they wore long coats, just like yours!"

He bit his lip again, and said in a hushed voice, "But aunt Petunia said that those people were bad, and that if I could make stuff happen, then I was bad too."

Severus would have loved nothing more than to have a very long, rather heated and possibly violent discussion with _aunt Petunia..._but that wouldn't be today.

"It seems to me, that since you have these powers, you could use them to do things you shouldn't."

Severus was speaking very seriously, and Harry had never listened with more intent.

"...but," Severus said slowly, "instead you are mending your homework, and to me, that seems to be a very good thing to do. You've never tried to hurt anyone before, have you?"

Vehemently, Harry shook his head.

"When you have the ability to do bad things, but you choose not to, that's very good. Your aunt just doesn't like things she can't understand, and because you can do these things and she can't, it makes her upset because she doesn't understand it...am I making sense."

Severus had never seen a more serious looking six year old in his life.

"When I make things happen...it makes her sad and angry." Harry finally said, and looked at Severus for confirmation.

"Yes."

"Oh..." Harry looked sad, and Severus almost rolled his eyes when he realized that the boy was feeling sorry for his awful aunt. How in the world had the boy managed to retain such moral excellence considering all he'd been through, and that only one of his parents had been a honestly good person? At the thought, Severus sagged slightly.

A cold hand placed itself on his arm, and surprised he turned to look inquisitively at the boy.

"If I'm not bad," Harry said softly, "you aren't either."

He'd meant it in regards to their shared magical core, but to Severus, it meant something quite different. Something he desperately needed to hear in that moment. Whether it was true or not...well, he'd rather not ponder that.

Trying to hold onto whatever dignity he had left, Severus looked down the empty street, lit only by a few streetlights and the few lit up decorations that had not been turned off. When he looked back, certain there was no trace of tears in his eyes, Harry was changing.

The hand still lay on his arm, offering comfort when it should have been the other way around, but his hair was becoming softer now. Not as coarse and stiff, it no longer stuck up but was falling into his concerned green eyes.

Carefully, as if his eyes might deceive him, Severus considered the boy's different features. Light freckles ran over the bridge of his narrower nose, they seemed to make his eyes even more prominent. His eyebrows, both furrowed in worry, were the exact replica of Severus' own.

There would be no denying it, not that he wanted to.

Lily had been taken from him this very night, six years ago today. He'd lost the one person he'd ever loved, the only one who pointed out when he was in the wrong, the only one he'd tried to change for. Among the rubble of that house, he'd found her there, laying across the floor as if she was just sleeping, her features peaceful.

The baby was crying uncontrollably from inside his cradle. Overwhelmed by guilt and feeling as if he himself were dying, Severus had wanted to scream. He wanted to rage and yell until his voice gave out-but the child's features had shocked him into silence instead so that he just sat there, his arms wrapped around a still warm body, the smell of dust and wildflowers all around.

"Are you okay?" Harry's voice drew him out of his memories, small hand patting him carefully on the arm, as if he were the adult.

"I was just...remembering," Severus said, his voice rough.

The words made an odd look appear on Harry's face, and he drew his hand back. The spot where his hand had been grew cold quickly. Severus missed it and wished he hadn't been drawn into dwelling on the things that couldn't be changed.

It was late, and he'd already delayed longer than he should have.

From his cloak pocket, Severus drew out the cotton bag he'd almost destroyed that morning. Part of him still wished he had obliterated it.

"This is for you," he said roughly, and shoved it at the watchful little boy.

"Me?"

Severus couldn't respond, and just watched as Harry opened the brightly colored bag and smiled at the candy corn within.

"Oh, this is my favorite!"

One little hand drew out several pieces and held them out to Severus who shook his head, throat closed up and still unable to speak.

Shrugging, but happy, Harry bit off the end of one piece of candy corn. He ate each of the three  
>colored sections separately, just as he had last year.<p>

Scanning his appearance, Severus watched as after several pieces, the physical features that were attributed to him slowly disappeared. The nose shortened, and the freckles which hadn't been there last year also vanished to be replaced with clear, unblemished skin. The freckles were most certainly from Lily, and this fact made a low fury rumble deep inside Severus. Doing this, year after bloody year, hiding not only some of his features but some of Lily's as a side effect of the potion...he hated it.

Harry's hair seemed to grow, when really it just lost its softness. The eyebrows were no longer Severus', but James Potter's.

It was done. The whole thing had taken just a moment, but it felt like a knife being slowly driven into his very soul.

Harry didn't notice anything, he wasn't supposed to. Severus had done his job well, and he loathed himself for it.

"I get to keep it? You don't want any at all?"

He was still concerned with sharing, and Severus just mutely shook his head.

Noticing that something was off with his friend, Harry stopped eating and drew the bag closed with the golden drawstring. Feeling his eyes on him, Severus decided he'd better leave, now. Before he snatched the boy up and took him far away, where even Dumbledore would have a hard time finding them.

Slowly, he took his wand out of his pocket and turned so he was facing the unassuming boy at his side.

Harry saw it, and there was no confusion on his face just a growing disappointment.

"Are you going to make me forget again?"

Holding still, Severus whispered, "Excuse me?"

The boy seemed to radiate sadness but he looked up at Severus, and when he spoke, his words were laden with pain only the abandoned knew.

"Every year on Halloween you come and talk to me, and give me candy when no else would and make me feel like _I'm not_ _alone_ _anymore_-and then you make me forget it all," his green eyes welled up with tears, and Severus felt his own face betraying him. He could barely breathe past the boulder that seemed lodged in his throat.

"I'm sorry, Harry."

His words could never make up for all that he'd done, and all that he would do, but he had to say them. This boy deserved to know that much, even if he had to make him forget it a moment later.

It was then that Harry sniffled once, and against all odds, laid his head against Severus' cloak covered arm. One small hand tentively wrapped around Severus' front, and the other went around his back in a desperate attempt to keep him near.

He was too small to wrap his arms all the way around, but that didn't matter to Harry. Just for a moment, he wanted to feel secure, to have the knowledge that even though it all may change, right now, he had someone that cared for him.

Severus felt close to collapsing. In a last ditch effort to hold it all together he'd taken to staring at the sky, silently pleading with anyone that would hear him to just help get through this. If he looked down at the desperate child that just wanted love, he knew he'd break.

The small hands desperately holding onto him were about to destroy him. It had never been this hard before.

How much longer could he do this? How many more years could he visit this hopeful child, just to watch him walk back into that unloving home. How much longer could he be trusted to act like he didn't care? Months, or years...when the boy went to Hogwarts, would he have to pretend to hate him?

Dumbledore said it would get easier, but instead of finding inner valor when he went off on Halloween night to accomplish this task, Severus instead found that his spirit seemed to chip apart like fragile china, leaving the barest glimpse of a man behind.

Dumbledore expected too much from him.

Severus had wanted to marry Lily, and it seemed that all was heading in that direction. They were secretly together, stealing moments whenever possible. He was looking for ways to leave the Dark Lord's ranks without being tortured to insanity through the Dark Mark, and Lily was searching for a safe place for them both to live.

He'd been called by the Dark Lord one night, and the next day images of a small town destroyed and littered with bodies had been blazoned across Wizarding papers. Upon seeing his face, Lily had known he was one of the many responsible for the disaster, there had been no way to avoid it. She couldn't look him in the eye. Furious, Severus felt the self-hatred from his teen years rear its ugly head, and in turn he'd said things he'd never forgive himself for.

Less than a month later, her and James Potter were married, and Severus had wanted nothing more than to see him dead.

He'd never been told that Lily was with child, it wasn't until the Dark Lord had tried to kill them all that he saw the child's face and knew something was amiss. The glamour Lily placed on Harry had fallen when she'd died, and along with it Severus saw the future that might have been...if only he hadn't done so many things wrong.

"Voldemort will return, Severus," Dumbledore had said, "Lily is dead, but her child remains, _your _child. When he returns, he will go after Harry, and if we don't have the knowledge to know how or when he plans to strike, Lily's sacrifice will be in vain...do you want that?"

He'd sat there, shaking and hating himself and seeing Lily's eyes in a baby's face surrounded by dark, soft, hair.

Then, he'd agreed.

The potion took a few hours to make, it hid the features Severus had been so shocked to see, and replaced them once again with characteristics from Potter's line, and the more it was used, the more features it overwhelmed.

With the potion reapplied every year, Harry would remain an orphan, and Severus would be able to spy on the Dark Lord when he returned and keep his son, the only thing he had left, safe.

At the time, and even now, it was the only option.

Until he discovered another way, there was nothing else to do but continue on as he had been.

The boy was still glued to his side, and Severus took a shuddering breath that had little to do with the chill in the air. He placed the end of his wand at the boy's temple, and as a single tear trailed slowly down his face, he whispered, "_Obliviate."  
><strong><br>Author's Note:** _Don't hate on me, I'm planning a sequel and it's going to be brilliant. :) **Please review! **This story refused to a happy one, and it's the first time I've made a Snape-is-Harry's-father story, so I'm all nerves! This story is on Potions and Snitches, for their annual Halloween fest. The memory spell faded because Severus didn't want Harry to forget him and that translated into the spell so that it fades every year just in time for him to reapply it. This was the first-time that Harry told Severus that he remembered anything.


End file.
